I agree with the statement that multi-level governance is needed. The question only is what competences should each respective level have. In this Covid19 outbreak case, national governments opted for completely different approaches: southern and eastern EU members opted for restrictive measures in order to prevent fast spreading, Sweden opted to ignore the threat and keep society going more or less as usual and other countries more or less hesitated and eventually opted for more or less strict restrictions in order to slow down the spread of the infection… Thus, if some people think that there should be a common EU-wide approach, which one should it be? For the time being, nobody knows which approach is the best. This is why I actually find useful that there was no single EU-wide approach but individual member states have opted for different ones because we would be able to compare results of each approach, learn from mistakes and adopt those things that proved to have worked well.

As for intra-EU immediate solidarity in fighting the corona-virus pandemic is complicated by the fact that all EU member states are more or less affected by the infection and therefore cannot send large volumes of their medical equipment and other resources elsewhere. Despite this fact, both central EU institutions as well as most member states (and also smaller donors in member states) individually have helped - to some extent - the regions struck worse by the disease. The problem is that the media enjoy covering negative events (e.g. when authorities in one member state - often mistakenly - withhold cargo of medical stuff to be delivered to another state - which is usually later somehow reasonably resolved but that resolution is not covered by the media) but do not pay attention to positive cases of solidarity. This situation leaves negative impressions in heads of the citizens from those worse struck regions and unnecessary increases their negative sentiments (despair, frustration, rage, etc.) which obviously does not add up the their spirit… That’s why the donors should learn the PR skills from China that even commercial supplies fully paid by the receiver accompany with labels promoting “friendship between people of China and the receiver” state, have ambassadors assisted by the delivery, and similar theatrical gestures. When EU members neglect this PR side of their help, they cannot be surprised that nobody learns about that help.

As for the post-pandemic call for the new Marshall plan: unlike after WW2, there were no physical damages that would require to reconstruct. That’s why the comparison with Marshall plan makes little sense because the main damage was lost profit due to the fact that economy had been stalled for several weeks. And since the scale is so big (most EU members had opted for such a several weeks break for their economy), it is obvious that the loss of profits cannot be compensated all of the involved in full scale. Citizens and companies should accept that, and instead of extending hand to the state (or EU), they should be inventive in finding ways to make up for that later - e.g. having shorter vacation this year, etc. The main goal for EU should not be to anyhow redistribute money but think about ways to make the common EU market more attractive for businesses so that they didn’t leave to Asia, USA or a tax paradise and use the common EU market only as a place to sell products and services developed and produced outside EU. This is a complex job that I wouldn’t describe further here but the main point is that citizens and business struck by the temporary suspension of economy would benefit from such a reform more than some one-off financial compensations.

It’s much worse than that: At the end of my comment’ I’m referring to an article definitely worth reading because it was written by an insider from China who describes how the Chinese market with medical products operates at the time of the corona-virus crisis (use google translate from Slovak): the point is that Chinese companies didn’t produce medical products in high volumes before the corona-virus outbreak either. But they very quickly adopted to the situation because they sensed that they can get very rich in very short time. But since they were freshly founded or re-oriented from other productions, most of them had virtually no experience with the production of products for medical purposes that’s why their products are of low quality and their certificates are often forged. Moreover, some rich speculators try to push the prices even higher by overwhelming the production with huge orders that they keep in stock waiting before the need will be even higher and thus the prices will go even higher.

It is thus absolutely ridiculous that European governments suffocate their own businesses with overwhelming bureaucracy, it takes ages before any permits and certificates for domestic companies are issued, their production is made pricier due to high prices of energies, high taxes including many “green” environmental taxes,… but at the time of need they find out no companies have left and THE SAME GOVERNMENTS that caused this misery then turn with desperate plea to companies in a totalitarian rival country over which they have absolutely no supervision and that are ruled by predatory practices and paying no attention to quality. These governments then take these often overpriced fake products and hand them to front-lines of the covid19 war to medical staff and hospitals and other critical use! That would be laughable if it was not for crying! And I don’t mention the embarrassing scenes how individual Western governments lead thug-of-war over these fake products (see the cases when both France and Germany were “robbed” of their supplies by Americans who paid more or applied their authority stemming from the fact that some of the companies are their own - like the 3M case)

Therefore, making EU self-sufficient economic powerhouse fully economically and technologically competitive with other global players should become the absolute priority of post-coronavirus EU! And this is not primarily about money. Americans also don’t subsidize companies yet many global companies want to be based (and incorporated) primarily in the USA… If EU continues with its naivistic policies focusing on migration, drastic climate change preventing measures, excessive spending on social welfare and other consumption purposes without long-term multiplication effect, etc. then EU will again stand naked at the time of crisis helplessly watching with open mouth how Americans and Chinese take advantage of their economic power!

The Czech Republic has also started to use its currently unused hospital capacities to treat coronavirus patients from other EU member states - First six patients from France are being transported to University Hospital in Brno:
Prague Morning – 5 Apr 20

It may be a good area where EU-wide cooperation may become systemic in the future: a network of participating hospitals across EU may be formed that would allow to share information about their capacities and mutually stand by in case of emergency. This kind of a direct cooperation can be more efficient than financial transfers (risks of their misuse or inefficient uses are considered high by many), largely bypass national politics (although the legislative condition for such a cooperation must be set - goal for central EU institutions) and voluntary principle could prevent feelings that institutions are forced to do something…

…

I’m also appending to my post from yesterday: US president Trump openly commented on how the USA take advantage of their Defense Production Act that empowers the US administration to force private companies to produce for the US administration whatever the US administration asks in case of national emergency (that covers the 3M case) . He noted that often it is enough to threaten to use the provisions of the act: https://youtu.be/HEbRtq2croI?t=3660
Why doesn’t EU have such a piece of legislation too?! It is another task for EU (and member states respectively) to come with a similar piece of legislation in order to activate domestic European resources next time an emergency occurs and EU was not embarrassed by dependence on rivaling global powers.

It may be a good area where EU-wide cooperation may become systemic in the future: a network of participating hospitals across EU may be formed that would allow to share information about their capacities and mutually stand by in case of emergency. This kind of a direct cooperation can be more efficient than financial transfers.

I totally agree - if the problem mainly concerns healthcare capacity, cooperation between hospitals would be very useful. I didn’t know about the help of hospitals in the Czech Republic, this is the best kind of cooperation between European countries. Unfortunately, there is a lot of propaganda in Italy, especially from right-wing parties, which instead focuses heavily on the lack of financial cooperation.